Monday, April 16, 2012

I had almost forgotten about Harold. But as I walked to the bus stop on the first day of sixth grade, I heard, “Hey Jake! Jake! Wait up, Jake! It’s 8:03. Bus Number 6 will arrive at 8:07.”

“Thanks for the update, Harold. I didn’t know I was so early. Tomorrow, I’ll sleep in another 4 minutes.”

Harold caught up with me and said, “I woke up at 6:30, but Mom said I couldn’t come out until I saw you.”

Great.

Harold is, well… different. Mom calls him “special.” He’s special alright. Harold is smart—real smart. Like, he can do three-digit division in his head. He can solve any math word problem and tell you who won the World Series starting with the very first World Series in 1904. Or was it 1903? You can bet Harold knows.

But Harold has some “peculiarities.” If he gets stuck on something, he can’t get unstuck. And this makes it hard for him to make and keep friends. Harold has something called Asperger’s.

Where is that bus?

“Hey, Jake, have you ever heard of Harvey Haddix?”

“Yeah, Harold, I know all about Harvey.”

I didn’t have a clue—never heard of Harvey Haddix, but I thought just this one time, Harold would buy it and not go into his never-ending monologue about one more baseball player I ‘d never heard of.

He’s quiet—this is good.

“You have? Because I just learned about him this summer when I was in Ohio visiting my grandma.”

Maybe if I don’t look his way and stay real quiet…

“Did you know that in 1959, Harvey Haddix pitched a perfect game?”

Rats!

“Yeah, Harold, I remember that. What time did you say the bus was coming?”

“8:07 am. Harvey Haddix played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and he pitched twelve straight perfect innings! Do you know who the Pirates were playing that night?”

“Let’s see, it was the…”

“It was the Braves.”

“That’s right. Harvey pitched a perfect game against the Atlanta Braves. Now, if we stop talking, I’ll bet we can hear if the bus is nearby.”

Harold laughed like I had said the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “The Atlanta Braves! Don’t you know anything? They were the Milwaukee Braves back then! It’s a good thing you’ve got me as your friend, Jake. I can help you keep things straight.”

Then Harold dug in his book bag and took out the green notebook.

Each year before school started, he’d add one green composition notebook to his school supply list and in that notebook Harold kept track of the times he beat me at anything—Texas Hold’em, NCAA 12, checkers. He’d write down the date, the game, and the score. He also wrote down baseball stats.

Harold collects little known baseball facts like the Smithsonian collects dead things—the more obscure the better. And thanks to Harold, whatever he knows, I know it too.

In a situation like this, it’s best not to appear too interested, but I was pretty sure the newest entry in the notebook was going to be, August 12, 2012. Jake Thomas doesn’t know that the Atlanta Braves used to be the Milwaukee Braves.

We heard the bus’s brakes one street over.

Harold stuffed the notebook back in his book bag and asked, “Want to sit together on the bus, Jake? Just like in elementary school? Make it seven straight years?”

I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t have a plan to avoid sitting with Harold on the bus in middle school. The problem was, once you started something with Harold, it was like it was etched in stone. If I sat with Harold today, I’d be sitting with him the rest of my middle school career.

Think, Jake, think.

The bus rounded the corner and stopped right in front of us. The door opened and there sat the meanest looking bus driver I’d ever seen in my entire life. She had crazy curly hair that stuck out from under an Atlanta Braves cap. I looked closer and I’m pretty sure she had a mustache. I would have thought she was a man if it weren’t for the pink and purple striped socks she was wearing with her sandals.

She snarled like the neighbor’s Dobermans as she gave a look to me and Harold, and then she said the best words I’d ever heard, “Shorty, you sit up front with all the other sixth graders and you with the Star Wars lunchbox, sit in Row Ten through Fifteen.” I couldn’t believe my luck—for once it paid off to be, as my sister called it, “physically immature.” The bus driver recognized me as a sixth grader, but because Harold was a good two feet taller than me, she mistook him for a 7th or 8th grader.

I think I’m going to like the Braves fan driving bus 6.

I looked at Harold and shrugged my shoulders, then climbed aboard to find a seat on the second row.

Because Row Two was right behind the bus driver, I could see the sign, Hello, My name is Ms. Woodmore and I am your bus driver, and I could see her face in her mirror. It wasn’t a happy face. In fact, it was looking angrier by the second. I turned around to see what was making her so mad and I saw Harold. He was standing in the isle, touching each row and counting out loud as he passed each one.

“Row Four. Row Five, Row Six.” The kids on the bus were laughing. When Harold got to Row Ten, he froze.

The bus driver shouted, “Young Man! You with the Star Wars lunchbox, we can’t leave until everyone is seated. And that includes YOU!”

I sank down in my seat. Why? Why did it have to start already? We aren’t even at school yet. I knew what the problem was. See, Harold can’t handle choices. It was the “Row Ten through Fifteen” that was throwing him.

A eighth grader sitting in the back shouted, “Hey, Star Wars, sit down already!”

It felt like an hour had passed since the time I’d found my seat next to fellow sixth grader, Lucy Thayer. She looked at me and said, “Jake do something.” I looked back at her and said, “You do something!”

I hated moments like this. I’d been put in situations like this since kindergarten, and it just wasn’t fair! Why did I have to be in charge of Harold? But, I got up, walked back to him and said,

“Harold, here’s a seat. Your seat will be on Row Twelve next to this kid here.” Just as Harold sat down, his “almost seat partner” moved to Row Fifteen.

When I got back to my seat, I looked at Ms. Woodmore’s mirror and by the look on her face, I could tell we weren’t going to be friends after all.

The first day of school was perfect and when I boarded the bus at the end of the day, I sat down beside Lucy—who had her nose in a book as usual—and I let out a big sigh. She looked up from her book and said, “What?”

“What what?”

“What’s the matter with you? You act like you’ve been holding your breath all day and you’re finally able to let it out.”

“It was just—just such a great day!”

“It’s only the first day of middle school, Jake.” Then she looked back down at her book and said, “It’s likely to go downhill from here.”

I didn’t care. Today was a perfect day. I had homeroom, Math, then Social Studies. Then Science, Health and lunch. Lunch was awesome! The food was horrible, but lunch was awesome. I sat two kids down from Tommy Wilbanks. Then next to him, sat Jonathan Mitchell, and right across him, was Steven Joiner. I was surrounded by Southside Comets. With any luck, I’d find a way onto their baseball team.

After lunch, came Language Arts and the payload of all classes—Physical Education. Several guys from my baseball team were in my PE class along with two more Comets. I was hoping that even though the PE unit was volleyball, I could find a way to demonstrate my superb athletic ability…or just avoid looking stupid.

But the best part of the past seven hours was that I didn’t see or even hear Harold the entire day. Not once!

Harold was on the “accelerated track” and I was on the “regular track.” Accelerated meant you were pretty smart—and on the second floor—and regular meant, well, you were regular. Regular was fine by me, especially if it meant I’d get to meet new kids without Harold ruining it for me.

I turned to find Harold and I saw him sitting in his same spot from this morning reading his favorite book, The World Series of Baseball Trivia: Stats, Facts, and Fun. It was one of Harold’s favorite books. He’d gotten it for his seventh birthday. I know, because I gave it to him. It was Mom’s idea. She knew how much he loved baseball and how he could remember things from every game he’d ever watched. That kind of thing impressed a seven-year-old—but a twelve-year-old, not so much.

Reading, especially about baseball, always seemed to calm Harold down. If he was upset or anxious over something—which was often—he’d read a book and it seemed to snap him out of whatever was bugging him.

I turned back around, hoping he hadn’t seen me looking. He was fine. I was great. And this was going to be one fantastic year.

12 comments:

I just wanted to pop in to say that I absolutely LOVE the revisions you made to this beginning. I read your beginning last week and really liked the voice, but now, not only do you have that voice, but you pull me right into the story, too. And, despite the tension between them, I come away liking both the Jake AND Harold -- which can be hard to pull off so quickly.

I liked this version much better. I feel like I'm in the story rather than the exposition - as fun as it was. I get both characters well and I can't wait to see what happens. My only nit pick is the opening when Jake explains all about Harold. Since it's first person, it's tricky, but we don't tend to info dump in our minds whenever we see someone. Especially someone we've known most of our lives! Since you are clearly talented, I'm sure you can find a better way to drop the info we need by say, showing us through their interactions and giving tidbits here and there instead. Great revision though!

So so much better! Really well done. I do agree with lisa though. I thought the Aspergers line didn't work, in particular. Maybe something more like, Mom says it's something called Aspergers, but kids just think he's weird, would be more in keeping with the voice. I also felt like the baseball conversation went a bit too long.

I think this is awesome - definitely hooked! I really like your MC's voice and think you've done a great job of making both him and Harold likeable.

I'd personally shift the bit about Harold having Asperger's to later, maybe when he can't decide where to sit? And I agree with Martina's comment about saying something like "Kids just think he's weird."

Nice rewrite. The voice is strong and you have two unique and different characters going on. I felt in general there is a lot of teeling, and that you tell us a lot about Harold rather then show us. Show us through the scene that Harold is different. Rather than having the information up front. It will draw the reader in more. I'd do away with the Asperger's telling completely and the getting stuck, and show us these qualities in this character. If you tell us he has Asperger's we the reader will expect certain things. Books Like, "A curious incident of the dog in the night," and, "Mockingbird," use Asperger character's but we're never told that's the special needs. That leaves those Asperger expectations out and it will give you a more open field to work in, and you will be able to show his peculirities. Also i felt the baseball stats went a little over the top. We get that he gets stuck on this stuff and while you show us this, you show us a lot. Just enough to keep it real. This is a great rewrite. Can't wait to read more.Shelley

The Harvey Haddix story will come back full circle at the end - a little fact that isn't discussed early on will come back and help "save the day". So I don't want to cut it. That's what makes this so hard-deciding what's really important and deciding how to best say it.

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